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Day 26 – A letter to my friend

His new home office was probably bigger than my entire house. There was pretty much everything in it: TV on the wall, couch with wireless keyboard, two other huge monitors in different places (I have no idea how he uses those), latest MacBook Pro with this new fancy touch sensor and another external monitor for it, a standing desk, piano keyboard and a huge mic.

Yet when I asked him a simple question, “Max, are you happy? Are you in the right place in life?” , he paused for about 20 seconds and didn’t give me a straight answer. It was apparent there was something going on inside of him. Something that he wanted to fix…

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Today I got about 7.5 hours of sleep, compared to my usual 6. Definitely feel more refreshed. I do not have anything special to report about my morning routine. It goes pretty smoothly. The only thing I want to share with you guys is my catch from yesterday:

Pretty cool right? I was hoping to put in some work yesterday, but the skies cleared up after the rain and I was a bit tired from the soccer game, so I decided to go fishing at my local pond.

By the way, today is the Labor day, which means another day off. The weather should be sunny and awesome and quite possibly I’ll end up on the beach later today. Have a lot of plans laid out for me, need to do some work for a new project that I getting involved with (too early to share any details) and I really need to revisit my 2 comma club caching program.

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Ok, let’s get to the meat.

Two days ago I got a call from one of my best friends Max. We first met at my first job about 12 years ago.

Unfortunately, we don’t get together very often, but when we do, it usually takes a lot of time since we both have a lot of things to share. This last call was no exception, I think all in all we spoke about 2.5 hours.

Just to give you a bit of perspective, I usually rarely pick up the phone at all, but when Max and I get together – the conversation just flows. Anyways, Max started with something like this: “Man, what happened to you after you joined HBO??” Apparently, people read my blog, which is pretty cool.

I explained that my search for something more started well before HBO. For a long time, I had this feeling inside of me that there is something more out there. I wasn’t really happy with myself. I felt like I was wasting time, even though by conventional standards I was doing pretty well. I had my first house, car, money in the bank before my thirties birthday.

When I purchased that program, I was very excited and pumped up. Once I got login credentials I rushed into the members’ area, downloaded the guide for the Module 1 and the very first question in the pdf sent me into deep thinking. The question was “Who do you want to serve?”.

I’m sure for some of you it may sound simple and that’s awesome. It wasn’t simple for me. I’ve been trying many different things in the past and most of my initiatives and projects ultimately failed because I wasn’t passionate enough. I was only focusing on the money side.

I didn’t want to make the same mistake all over again, create another project just to make a quick buck. That’s not what I was looking for. That’s why when I saw this first question of the first module, I immediately understood there will be no magic pills. I’ll have to grind and look deep inside to uncover my true passions.

“Who do I want to serve?” – I had no freaking idea and that was destroying me every single day for about two months… I desperately wanted to succeed with the program, get to another level, find my passion and make money doing what I love, but I just didn’t know how…

Then I accidentally got to the UPW event and Tony Robbins was able to make some adjustments to my old way of thinking. I let this whole stress go. Yes, I paid 15K for this program and I really struggle with it. Maybe it will turn out to be a huge waste of money, but you know what? Fuck it! I decided to let it go.

Instead, I decided to focus on the fundamentals. It’s impossible to build something that will sustain heavy load and will last a long time without proper foundation and mine was very weak and fragile.

I was eating pretty much everything, woke up late, didn’t do any mind work. No wonder I felt uninspired, tired, heavy and unhappy…

It’s been almost a month since I started the “new era” for me and I feel like I’m in a much better spot to achieve my goals and complete this 2 Comma Club Coaching program. I still don’t know the answer to the “Who do you want to serve?” question, but I do know that I’m on the right track to my own happiness and success.

As Max and I continued to talk, I sensed there was something bothering him so I decided to ask a straight question: “Max, are you happy with where you are in life?”. He paused for about 20 seconds and wasn’t able to give me a definitive answer. He wasn’t depressed or anything, it just seemed like he was going through the same transformation phase in life. Maybe it’s the age thing? Middle age crisis or whatever that’s called.

His situation was a bit different from mine though. Max felt like he was much more creative, fun and outgoing during his teenage years (his peak) and then he lost all of that when he grew up into “successful” man and husband he is today.

He also mentioned that there was no purpose in life in general and that there were only two groups of people in the world – first group doesn’t know there is no purpose and desperately tries to chase money, the other group (much much smaller) are the people who achieved financial freedom and realized there is no purpose after all. Why bother trying to achieve something if everything is pretty much pointless. Pretty depressing right?

While I didn’t necessarily agree with that way of thinking, there was one similarity between us though – both knew that we needed to change something in our lives, but we didn’t know what and how.

I wonder how many people feel the same way? I would guess quite a lot.

Unfortunately, there will never be a universal answer to those questions. Everyone has to walk their own paths. The important part here is that you actually have to get up and start walking.

The good start is to identify your next goal that you would want to achieve in the next six months to a year. Just don’t pick something crazy that will take you a lifetime to accomplish. Pick something achievable and realistic. The beauty about goals is that they can (and will) change as you grow. Once you reach one, you set the next one and keep rolling.

The problem with the most of us is that we have no goals. I certainly didn’t. How can we possibly get something if we have no idea what it is?! Once we have a goal (any goal will do) we can periodically check our progress and change approach if we are not getting closer. Maybe even change the whole goal if it’s not relevant anymore.

What’s really important here is the journey. The goals will come and go, but the journey and experiences that we get trying to achieve those goals, that’s what will stay with us for the rest of our lives. Be kind and be grateful for what you already have in your life, take care of your body, train your mind and fucking breath. Every day is a blessing.

We ended our 2.5-hour call with my friend on the positive note. I think/hope he decided to make some changes after all. Only time will show what will come out of this. Maybe one day we will be doing podcasts together and all of you will get to experience firsthand how awesome, creative, passionate and smart my friend Max really is.

p.s. Max, I know you will find it. Just start rolling. One step a time. Here is the special song that I got just for you: